This project was released in many countries around the world on 19th of November 2019, it’s isn’t released in India yet and still, in India, many people still have no idea of what stadia is, so in this article, I’ll clearly explain what stadia is and everything. This platform allows the user to stream games from google server onto your device, handling all of the computation on their end, which means there won’t be any need to download games from pirated games or your computer doesn’t need a high-end ram, processor and graphics to stream games. This project might also be the “Netflix for gaming”.
Stadia is similar to Netflix the only difference is that you watch movies in one and you play games in the other. Stadia costs around $10/month and you get unlimited access to games. When Google announced this project back in 2019 there was a slight spark of collaboration between Microsoft and Sony to take on a similar project and now they joined forces and started to develop a similar one. As more tech companies enter into the field of gaming the landscape of competition also increases beyond the simple scale of “Console Vs PC”. Now that stadia is been released in several countries we could have seen that there are a lot of battle royal games being released and the reason for that is given below.
When it comes to a subscription-based service, the amount hours spent online starts to outweigh the quality just like Youtube a video of a child hitting a father with views over 150million earns more than a video of a man giving out quality lectures about Python which has around 340k views. The lecture would be a quality content but when it comes to business who gets more clients matters. And when a game gets included in a service like stadia rather than an individual purchase, playtime becomes more important than quality or user experience. An online multiplayer game takes more time than a single-player story mode game. So when playtime matters a lot why create a game with a good storyline and a fun game rather companies tend to develop a long game which never ends. Nobody with than mind would price Fortnite the same as Batman Arkham series. But when it comes to a subscription-based service Fortnite or any battle royal game could more money that Arkham series. This of course abstract some details about how stadia and other similar services could compensate developers, but the issue of playtime vs quality of gameplay would make more complications when this service is introduced to the whole world.
In fact, without stadia being introduced in many countries, flashy games with high production value are taking over games produced by smaller companies which have some quality content like “No Mans Sky”. A game called “Anthem” which was one of the most publicized games of the year earned more than 100million dollars though the game had a lot of errors and glitches. Small games like No Mans Sky and The Ancestors are being buried by these companies. These games have been getting some good reviews and 10/10 on steam but still being buried. Expensive trailers and hype-marketing is what makes these games profitable.
Gaming industry like EA tends to milk gamers for every cent they’ve got, like collectors edition, DLC and even for high graphics. When stadia is released all over the world there will be a serious shift in the paradigm of development. But still, there is something good to come out of it, too. A project like this requires technology which is currently not available and if google is going to allow the developers to focus on this project, that would be something to be prised. When released the worst case would be gaming publishers like steam won’t even exist.
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